A few months ago I was contacted by a rep from a circus training facility here in Los Angeles. They wanted some simple, but dynamically lit training photographs. Fun, right? Totally. But…

They needed seven finished shots. They didn’t want any story or heavy meaning in them, yet they wanted each to look different from the other enough lighting-wise that I’d have to use several different set ups. No problem. So where’s the but? I’d only have an hour to use the space plus a few minutes to tear down. Did I break down and cry? Sure, but once I dried my eyes I got to figerin’. 15 minutes to set up and 45 minutes to shoot the performers - including moving the lights between shots. I’d have to make it work. That may or may not have been a tight fit for some of you newspaper guys out there, but for this fine art portrait photog- well, I had to do some creative thinking.

I needed minimum gear with maximum flexibility. My solution for lots of light rearranging in a short amount of time? BOOM!

Or should I say, “boom” - a stand boom arm. They come in a few shapes and sizes, or at least sizes. But when I’m shooting boom on location I put a Canon 580ex II flash up at the end of something like a MSE Mini Boom ($159 at Adorama - same $159 at BH) along with an umbrella or small soft box and Daddy’s a happy camper.

How does using a boom speed things up? You can just point and grunt and point again and your assistant can just turn and twist a lever or two and now your light is in a totally new location in any of three, count ‘em three axis - left / right, up / down, and in / out. Oh, you think that’s six axis? What are you, the axis police? It’s three. But that’s all you need. And even if you don’t have an assistant you can do it yourself lickitysplit!

Bonus? Sure, use a Radiopopper like I described in my article, “How To Use Radiopoppers To Trigger Your Studio Strobes and Non TTL Flashes” which is about - you guessed it - how to use Radiopoppers to trigger a studio strobe. Now you can put that 580 flash up on the end of that boom and never lower it to change the power settings. You can adjust the output right from the master slave on your camera. Super fast! That’s what I did for the circus shoot. I also lit the huge back wall of their space for some shots with a studio strobe. Once the studio strobe was set I could adjust the brightness by rolling my aperture up or down. I added another 580ex II for a rimlight also set to manual that I could adjust from the master flash without worries thanks to the radiopopper. No running back and forth or yelling to an assistant to adjust the power settings.

Another bonus? Greedy bastards! Okay, come back for Friday’s post. It’s a time laps of the photo session. If it’s not Friday yet, read some Nice old posts to hold you over. After Friday you can just click on this link: Time Lapse Circus Photo Shoot.

Nice!

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